In a few days I will know how well this whole blog idea will go. I really don't know how to get people interested in following it because honestly, I don't know that what I have to say is anything anyone would want to read. Does anyone actually read anything anymore?
The thing I would like to write about first is the comment I made in yesterday's blog about how the world is not kind to children. I think perhaps I was not clear in my meaning.
I remember some of my childhood, and mostly what I recall is that I was afraid. I was afraid of the anger I could sense in the world around me. Adults, it seemed to me, were not very rational. They said one thing to me, but I could see that they either didn't really believe what they said, or somehow what they said only applied to me and not to them. I could see that they were volatile. They were much more powerful than I. And they weren't oppossed to showing it.
Now that I am a man, I am still afraid. I am afraid that what I say isn't rational and someone will figure it out and call me out on it. I am afraid that for all my idealistic thoughts, I am really an imposter because when it comes down to it, I don't really live like I say I want to live. I am afraid that my own volatility will leave behind me a wake of destruction, even if it is as seemingly innocuous as stealing the wind from someone's fragile soul-sail. I am afraid that the power I now wield will be the ship I captain all the way to hell.
After all, simply because I am not in a position to affect the masses like say a Joseph Stalin, it does not make my abuse of power any less evil.
So when I speak of the world not being kind to children, I actually mean children of all ages. We are all children, no matter how many generations have leaked out of our bodies. The world is not kind, but there is, behind it all, something that tells us it ought to be different. This something can not be merely dismissed as our instinct to survive because on the one hand, we have an instinct that tells us to save ourselves, and on the other, an instinct to help those in a lesser state than we are. Which one we choose depends on something else, something else that helps us decided between the two. This something else can not itself be either of the two instincts.
So the dilemma then is that something behind the world, a world that is so obviously bent toward the powerful and against the weak, prompts me to, at different times and degrees, to act or at least feel that this bent is wrong, that what I ought to do is not in fact what I want to do, and more often than not, I do what I do in spite of it.
This is not a new or original line of thinking. Anyone who has spent a day or two in Sunday school knows what I am getting at. Yet, I wonder how often we really see how fragile a child's view of the world is. Even the child of middle-age.
So then, I do not at present propose any specific remedy for this state of affairs. I know of one, but I also know that it is actually much harder to get at than just a few words on a page.
It is a lot like my struggles with drug addiction. For years I held on to it because it was the surest and simplest method I knew of to feel better. And the way out of it was hard, but it was, after all was said and done, the easiest thing I could ever do. The life of an addict is a hard life. If you have ever struggled like this, you know that what I say is true.
If you are still with me, I hope you will become a regular follower of my blog. I promise to become more adept at putting my incoherent thoughts into a much more fluid form. For now, God Bless. And Be Kind to The Child You Meet Next.
